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96 Foreign Aff. 30 (2017)
The Case for Trump's Foreign Policy: The Right People, the Right Positions

handle is hein.journals/fora96 and id is 476 raw text is: The Case for Trump's Foreign Policy The Right People, the Right Positions Matthew Kroenig Media coverage of U.S. Presi- dent Donald Trump's foreign policy has been overwhelm- ingly negative. Analysts have seized on early policy missteps, a supposed slow- ness in staffing the national security bureaucracy, and controversial statements and actions as evidence that Trump's foreign policy is already failing. But the critics have gotten a lot wrong and failed to give credit where credit is due. The Trump administration has left behind the rhetoric of the campaign trail and has begun to adopt foreign policies that are, for the most part, well suited to the challenges ahead. Trump inherited a crumbling international order from President Barack Obama, but he has assembled a highly capable national secu- rity team to help him update and revital- ize it. Many of the controversial foreign policy statements that Trump has made as president have, in fact, been consistent with established U.S. policy. Where he has broken with tradition, it has often been to embrace much-needed change. MATTHEW KROENIG is Associate Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council. Follow him on Twitter @kroenig. It is too early to pass definitive judg- ment on the Trump administration. But its rapid improvement, combined with Trump's own willingness to take bold action, suggests that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger may have been right when he told CBS News last Decem- ber that Trump's presidency could present an extraordinary opportunity for U.S. foreign policy. TRUMP'S INHERITANCE To gauge the success of a president's foreign policy, it helps to examine the record of his immediate predecessor. Here, the Trump administration has a low bar to clear. In Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Obama left behind a far more dangerous world than the one he inherited in 2009. For the first time since World War II, Russia is redrawing the map of Europe at gunpoint. Meeting only a weak response from the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to threaten and undermine the United States and its NATO allies in a bid to break the alliance. In Asia, the picture is little better. China has seized contested territory from U.S. allies and is undertaking a massive military buildup that the country's leaders hope will eventually render the United States unable to keep its security commitments in the Asia-Pacific. The Obama administra- tion's policy of strategic patience with North Korea was a euphemism for standing idly by as threats gath- ered. According to expert estimates, Pyongyang now has up to 21 warheads and is on track to have nuclear mis- siles that could hit the continental United States. 30 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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